Simple Pleasures
by Charon de Rouen
Summary: A oneshot in which, Erik, impatient with death, meets with an old friend over drinks and puts absinthe to good use.


**Title: **Simple Pleasures

**Author's Note:** A joke written for a friend in order to fulfill an off-handed rhetorical challenge so outrageous that something naturally had to be done about it. Novelty. Unpolished. (Rated for drug use, ludicrous innuendo, the shameless abuse of semi-colons, convoluted prose, and awkward verb tense.)

* * *

The catacombs and tunnels beneath the _Palais Garnier_ were as silent as they always had been. It was the way their sole, sentient inhabitant had desired them since his initial relocation to this musty domain of darkness, but the silence was now unbearable in light of recent events. Thanks to Christine, there had been music of an inexplicable sort sounding here for a time, and it had only served to remind him of the lonely existence he had always led. Now that it was gone, he felt this loneliness more acutely than before. 

The all-consuming silence of her absence had devoured every note of that music in the meanwhile, every murmur of conversation and every deceiving word of affection and appreciation; in short, leaving nothing but his memory to reflect upon with bitterness and private love.

He had tasted beauty, yes, and Erik knew that with every fiber of his being. The knowledge of Christine leaving; indeed, her literal passing from his world to where he could not follow her for the sake of her happiness was an exquisite pain he loved and hated and wished never to experience again.

But, he knew she was happy and this was the best he could hope for, even if his own happiness had been annihilated, broken, crushed, and dismembered (as well as eviscerated, foiled, gutted, hurt, impaired, jinxed, killed, and lacerated; and additionally mutilated, nullified, oppressed, pained, quelled, rent, sabotaged, trampled, undone, vilified, whipped, and so forth; but really, who was counting?--Certainly not him!)

All that had been left then, naturally, was to die as he told her he would, as he told the Daroga he would; but dying of a broken heart always took so bloody long with depressingly little progress despite starvation, dehydration, sleep deprivation, and every sort of sadomasochistic form of hurrying along death that could devise short of actually finishing the deed himself. How embarrassing to a romantic who knew this to be the ultimate in style and taste for the jilted, unrequited lover.

In spite of his impatience, the hours became days and the days became weeks until soon, Erik found himself reflecting quiet calmly upon a fortnight previous. It forced him to smile.

What terribly maudlin thinking all that dying of a broken heart business was, he thought as he checked his pocket watch and examined his only link with time as the rest of the world knew it.

It was utterly maudlin because, you see, a week ago, he had met someone else--or re-met, rather.

The spectacular find was made after becoming convinced that every lover in history, literary or otherwise, was a deceitful liar and this whole dying of a broken heart nonsense was naught but dramatic sham. It simply _did not happen_ and, with regret, he had been forced to shed his purist air and rummage through his closets for the bottle of cyanide he knew was hidden there somewhere to help things on a little.

It had been a fruitless search and he was obliged to cease, particularly after musing that most important property of cyanide beneath Certain Death was the fact that under the preoccupation of suicide, cyanide _never_ worked when one actually _wanted_ it to.

But then, he heard a sound from the cellar he had ransacked not ten minutes prior and, going to investigate, he came upon another treasure of quite another sort, sprawled seductively atop the unstable mess of old belongs disturbed by his hunt.

Until that moment, Erik had shamefully forgotten her but in a flash he vividly remembered all.

It had been a hot day in Tehran when he came upon her, browsing through the bazaars and markets. She basked demurely in the heat below the merchant's canopy in a way that caught Erik's eye in a way no other had. The Daroga, trailing at his side like an insipid dog, had discouraged him and told him not to give her a second look; but Erik killed his protestations with a single, felling glare and after a quiet conversation, he brought her home where she remained ever since.

And now, here she was in France (in Paris no less!): the beauty he became acquainted with in Persia.

He had not expected to see her here. He hadn't questioned how she managed to sequester herself down here after all these years, either. She had always done quite as she wished to Erik's chagrin, as many of her kind did.

But it had been years, hadn't it? When had they last met? It must have been sometime before the Siege. Regimes and republics had changed, but she looked hardly a day older than when he first met her.

With a gentle smile that came upon his face in spite of his efforts to remain stoic and miserable, they had met. His hands wandered and he had reached out to stroke her soft, supple texture; her slender support. Certainly her Maker must have employed more thought, more effort, more time when crafting this beautiful thing. He had had her once and now, he must have her and he _would _have her.

Dying of a broken heart could wait a little while longer was his decision when he lay down with her to get reacquainted. Old habits were so difficult to abstain from and it was so difficult to deny an old friend.

With a half-empty bottle of absinthe in his arm (no additional related paraphernalia; he enjoyed his liquor straight, as any true man ought to—that's what he liked about her, she made him feel _masculine_) and with his beloved cradled the other, he presently strolled out the front door to the dock outside on his shores.

It was not as romantic as their previous sojourns; but at the present moment, it was the best he could do. When they had known each other in Persia, he remembered long, hot, sweaty evenings on his veranda, laughing and watching the sun finally relinquish his throne in the sky, listening to the tolling of the mosques calling the faithful to prayer all about the squalid city. She had been tolerant and durable and sometimes they would keep out all night simply because they could.

_Christine _never could have lasted long in Persia. It was that Scandinavian skin. One more disappointment after another regarding that silly girl, wasn't it?

A table waited outside for them already—for they had been through these special evenings many times since their fated rejoining—whereupon he placed the bottle. Hands free, he unrolled the Persian rug beside it onto the carefully swept ground and only after this preparation had been made, with a gentle smile, he stretched out his unsoiled and beautiful lady on the rich expensive rug. Once she had unfolded to him like a blushing bride, his long musician's hands were loving as he caressed her sleek, rounded contours and he followed her down, their forms melding together as though they had been made for one another; her supple construction holding his body without protest as no on ever had, as he rested down upon her.

"Ahhhh, thank you, m'dear," he said with a groan of satisfaction, stroking her; for he had been on his feet all day and it was very kind of her to be so obliging. Comforted and relaxed, Erik reached over to the bottle of _la feé verte; _and deftly uncorked the container with one hand. Idly, a small shot of the emerald liquid poured out into a glass.

He did not drink it immediately, but when he finally tossed it back, he remained staring up at the black, enclosed sky of the vault with utter serenity, waiting for the wormwood to take effect and produce the delightful whirling sunset he had grown so accustomed to in recent days.

"What's that, my dear?" Erik asked to the silence and darkness. He replaced the stopper and the empty glass then shifted more comfortably against her. (She obliged.) "What if she returns? Oh, I highly doubt she will."

Silence.

"Well, if you must know, she must come to me on abject hands and knees because I will accept nothing less than that, and once she has groveled and begged for my indulgence and highly sought-after forgiveness, I will simply laugh and tell her I've moved on. It's as simple as that."

More silence.

Erik began to laugh—a cold, amused chuckle that he felt no need to restrain.

"My dear, how you _do _tease me so."

Putting his hands behind his head and settling back into his lawn chair on the Persian rug, he yawned, he stroked the wooden arm of his beloved and contemplated the prospects of taking her—it—on a trip to Verona.

Yes, he was quite over Christine, now.

* * *

**End Note:** ...I plead the Fifth. 


End file.
